


Moult No Feather

by ERNest



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Hamlet - Shakespeare, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: Aziraphale and Crowley could be romantic or not, Canonical Character Death, Existential Angst, Ghost Hunters, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Violence and death are alluded to but nothing graphic, Wordplay, same with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: they love each other and that's what matters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 07:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19741192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: “It is put out,” said Aziraphale sternly, “That the king of Denmark was bitten by a serpent while sleeping in his garden.”“Hmm, really?” Crowley answered in disinterested tones, until he looked up and saw the angel’s face. “Whaaat, you thinkIhad something to do with all that rubbish?”There's a reason Crowley hates the fourteenth century.





	Moult No Feather

“It is put out,” said Aziraphale sternly, “That the king of Denmark was bitten by a serpent while sleeping in his garden.”

“Hmm, really?” Crowley answered in disinterested tones, until he looked up and saw the angel’s face. “Whaaat, you think _I_ had something to do with all that rubbish?”

“Well it is… in your _nature_ , you see.”

“Snakes can do what they want; I’m not in charge of them. And it’s not like I kill people, or not directly at any rate. I just do the tempting, now _that’s_ my nature.”

“Right, of course. So you won’t mind popping over with me to have a look?”

“Mind? No! It’s just that I don’t believe in Denmark.”

“I had some of my people take a look around,” said Crowley, almost completely failing to sound nonchalant.

“And?”

“ _And_ , angel, you didn’t tell me there were _ghosts_ involved!”

“Didn’t I? Oh, I’m sure I must have mentioned it at some point. But that should be right in your wheelhouse. You are, after all, a demon.”

“Nope, no, never! I don’t _mess_ with ghosts. Restless spirits cause no end of trouble – rattling their chains, trying to – ugh – set things _right_.” Crowley pulled a face. “Besides, they’re sooo, boooring, always talking about the same handful of subjects they managed to hold onto when they crossed over.”

“Yes, I can see how that would be frustrating. Just as you can see that we have to go meet the -- woo-ooh! Ghost of Buried Denmark!"

"What's with all the ... wiggling fingers? Are you -- Aziraphale, listen, are you trying to be spooky?"

"But I am spooky! A very spooky angel, that's me! No, don't roll your eyes. Now, one of my contacts is a guard on the western watchtower, and by balancing his line of credit down at the local tavern and paying for a week’s worth of ale in advance, I’ve gained us access to spend a couple nights as Captain Marcellus and – friend?”

Crowley sighed heavily but found he couldn’t deny the angel anything when his eyes were so full of hope. “Oh, all _right_. You know, I think I could make a good Bernardo.”

“Excellent. And before we have to do any work, there’s going to be a good wedding feast!" added Aziraphale. "I love a good feast."

"Nope, it's funeral meats, I checked."

“You are a scholar, speak to it, Horatio!”

Aziraphale turned to Horatio, hands poised to clap excitedly if need be. “Am I to understand that you’ve attended ghost college?”

“Get with the tiiimes, angel!” yelled Crowley from where he was safely ensconced behind a sturdy looking cannon. “It’s the fourteenth century; _every_ college is a ghost college.”

“Really, fancy that! Oh, I had no idea!”

“Yes, we all learn Latin as a matter of course, which is the language of exorcisms and the occult.” Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who tilted his hand back and forth to indicate the man was half right. “At times I feel myself more an Antique Roman than a Dane.”

“Rome was nice,” Crowley said softly. “We had oysters, do you remember?” Aziraphale was about to answer when the demon’s face contorted horribly. “ ‘Tis here!” he gasped, and the ghost stepped through him.

“ ‘Tis here!” Horatio said a moment later.

And then, nothing at all. Aziraphale would have known if the spirit still lingered. “ ‘Tis gone,” he said, “And will not come again.”

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”

“Uhhh that sounds like your cue.”

“Does it?”

“Now Crowley, there was no reason to make him be so mean to that kind old man. Polonius is only trying to do his job.”

“Oh yeah, blame everything on the demon! If I had urged him to indulge in some light mockery – which I haven’t – I think that would be well-deserved. He’s so irritating and oblivious at the same time, and I’ve been around enough demons to know what a dreadful combination _that_ is!”

“He’s not that annoying. Just because he happens to take the long way round doesn’t mean there’s no value to what he says. He wants to know what’s wrong so he can help repair it, what’s wrong with that?”

“What’s _wrong_ , angel, is that he really and truly believes Ophelia is the root of Hamlet’s lunacy, when it’s quite clear to every other living creature that he’s got bigger things on his mind. And the way he talks you can tell he thinks he’s soooo smart.”

“Oh…” Aziraphale stilled a trembling lip. “I – I talk like that.”

“Well you’re allowed! You’re one of the most intelligent entities I know.”

“Am I really!”

“Which – by the way, don’t think I hadn’t noticed your fingerprints all over this! You collect old texts because they’re old and first editions because they’ll someday become old, and then the prince goes talking in circles about ‘words, words, words’? Well, you have to admit that it’s a bit obvious.”

“Hmm, you’re right, that _does_ sound like me. But it most definitely wasn’t!”

“You mean to say he just came up with this on his own?”

“It certainly seems that way,” Aziraphale said, leading the way into a courtyard that looked just like all the others they’d been in. “But what’s his game?”

“He’s talking,” said one of the gentlemen already there.

“To himself,” added the other.

“What do you two do, then?” Crowley demanded.

The two looked at each other uncertainly until the one called Guildenstern admitted, “Generally just… what we’re told.”

“And what’s that? Generally speaking, that is.”

“It’s little enough,” Rosencrantz said. “Glean what afflicts lord Hamlet, and we shall have such thanks as fits a king’s remembrance.”

“Neither of you gentlemen would happen to know how much that is, I suppose? We couldn’t work that one out on our own.”

“Weeell, I don’t know about a regular king, but the memory of the King of Kings isn’t worth much, I can tell you.”

“Crowley!” hissed Aziraphale, looking nervously at the sky, but thunderclouds failed to gather at those words.

“Come on, Angel, even you must know I’m right on this one! All those rules that must be followed to the letter but contradict each other? He set a rainbow in the sky as a reminder to never again punish his Chosen People, but he still tests them all the time, and for _what_ reward? No, he just keeps testing and testing and testing them into dust, like he’s forgotten how to stop!”

“I suppose…” he said wretchedly, flexing his fingers through the air. He didn’t usually miss his Flaming Sword, but this was one of the moments he felt wielding it could have given him a sense of security.

“We only have what we’re told,” said Guildenstern, “and for all we know, it isn’t even true.”

“Ineffable,” Aziraphale murmured.

Guildenstern relaxed. “Yes, that’s a way to think of it! There, you see; there’s no need to worry, not if it’s all been decided for us.”

“You’re the one who’s worried,” Rosencrantz pointed out. “I’m just fine.”

“There are wheels within wheels, and it’s not for us to know why. We are little men after all and…”

“No,” said Aziraphale, rising suddenly. He’d already been standing, but now he stood tall; the air around him quivered with his resolve.

“Pardon?” said Crowley, while scratching his ear.

“Pardon?” said Guildenstern, squinting against the light.

“You heard me.” He crossed his arms and gave a firm little nod. “No, you’re _not_ little men. You received a message in the pre-dawn half-alive light, and whether you understood it or not, you heeded the call. There’s nothing small about _that_! And that’s why we’re going to help you,” he said, beaming.

“Aziraphale, may I speak to you for a moment?” Crowley spoke through a smile that looked painted on, and by a painter who had somewhat overestimated the usual number of teeth for a human.

“Well, my friend might not, he’s very cheeky.”

“Privately?” he added, already steering the angel out of earshot. “Are you sure about this, bud?”

“What do you mean, of course I’m sure! Now look here,” he said, brandishing a finger. “You don’t thwart me, I thwart _you_. That’s how this Arrangement works.”

“Yes, yes! Sure, usually that would be the case, and it’s all fine and dandy, but I mean, these guys are _spies_ , and against their childhood friend, no less! Are you sure that won’t get you in trouble with…” He tilted his head toward the sky meaningfully.

“Oh, I, well, um, you know,” he stammered desperately, twisting his hands together. “But they’re _good men_ , surely even you can recognize that! And if they _are_ spies, at least they’re working for the right side, the legitimate holders of power, so that gives weight to any moral argument the Almighty might have with me.”

“Oh yeaah, of course, it’s just a perfectly legitimate usurpation and hasty remarriage, thereby offending both legal and natural practices…”

“Don’t help then, if you don’t want to!”

“I didn’t _say_ that! Did I ever say I wasn’t going to help? Of course I’m going to help!

“I’m glad to hear it,” said the angel, clapping his hands before he skipped back to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

“Look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire!” Only Hamlet could have said what those much too changed eyes were seeing, but Aziraphale could feel the sterile promontory of the Heavens just a wingspan away and as far distant as the leap to the next electron, while Crowley could only think of flames and sulfurous torment. Instinctively, they drew closer together, needing the touch of someone more like themselves than any man could be.

And Hamlet confirmed their reluctance and horror at such a sky “—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable,”

“You called?” Crowley lazily lifted his arm.

“ _You_ , really? You think that was about you?”

“You think maintaining a full body swagger is easy? It took decades to learn isolation of my body parts, and decades more to make it all look loose and relaxed.”

As Aziraphale rolled his eyes fondly, Hamlet continued, “In action, how like an angel!”

“Psst, that’s your cue!” Crowley said, nudging him, and Aziraphale dutifully struck a pose.

But “In apprehension, how like a god!” made them both recoil – Crowley because he’d never be welcomed back and to be apprehended by a God could only lead to destruction by Holy Water; Aziraphale because he would never presume to tread so close to something he was not.

“The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.”

“And yet, to me,” said Crowley, his voice akin to the final sigh of a dying thing.

“What is this quintessence of dust?” Aziraphale finished for him, _his_ voice the first protest of a creature newly wrought and refusing to turn back to the dark so soon.

Rosencrantz gasped then and tried to bridge the gap between himself and the prince.

“Though of course we know the answer to that one already,” mused Crowley when they’d left the mortals to their Lenten entertainment. “They’re _all_ dust: Hamlet, his uncle-father, his aunt-mother, all the courtiers, and all the lovers of the prince. Even – alas, poor ghost!”

“And to dust ye shall return,” Aziraphale agreed. “But in between – oh, _Crowley_ , the wonders they can do!”

“Don’t I know it? It’s because they’ve got something we’ll never have, and that’s an imagination.”

“And the free will to use it.”

“Cheers to them!”

"If he's mad north by northwest and knows his carpentry and ornithology when the wind is southerly, I wonder how he'd have fared at the Eastern Gate."

"Depends. Would you have had another flaming sword to offer him, or just the wings for him to identify?"

“Do it England, for like the hectic in my blood he rages, and thou must cure me. Till I know ‘tis done, howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.”

Crowley shivered as the king swept past him. “Man, oh man, is that guy a snake! Believe me, I should know.”

“I thought you weren’t responsible for all the serpents in the world,” Aziraphale said dryly.

“I’m _not_! That doesn’t mean I can’t recognize my own kind. And this one is _nasty_. You do realize this means he’s going to have Hamlet killed.”

“He might be justified there. The prince is a dangerous young man.”

“Maybe he’s been twisted by grief, but that doesn’t mean he should die for it! You should have let me tempt him into killing his uncle back in the chapel.”

“Crowley!”

“What? Claudius gets sent up there, so you guys lose; Hamlet tortures himself even _more_ exquisitely when he puts it together after the fact, so my side wins, and more importantly Claudius is dead and everyone in Denmark is better off.”

“Well, I don’t know about _all_ of that. But at least they’re on a boat.”

"I would cut his throat in the church."

"Is that your demonic influences, my dear?"

"Me, noooo! I wouldn't be caught dead in a church, you know me."

The young woman was to be buried with the absolute minimum of funeral rites, and the gossip around the graveyard held the common refrain that as a suicide she barely deserved that minor degree of ceremony. This could have, in theory, counted towards a win for Crowley and his side, just one more lost soul that failed in the very end to achieve goodness, and he wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted. He lurked in the fog, staring at the funeral party, and hoped for the sake of his image that he looked more hungry than miserable.

“In the end is this all she gets?” he said, a trifle desperately. “Searing contempt, or else to be the lead up to a joke that’s not even about her?”

“Well.” The angel cleared his throat a few more times than necessary. “It’s not like Heaven can take her now. There are rules about that sort of thing, and even if nothing can be proved conclusively there’s still enough doubt around the circumstances surrounding her death that we can’t be seen making an exception. What would people call us if we went around bestowing mercy on just any old person?”

“Merciful, maybe,” Crowley said, turning incredulously. Whatever he saw in Aziraphale’s face convinced him not to belabor the point. “Anyway, drowning is a terrible way to go, on purpose or not.” When the angel still said nothing, he pressed a little further. “ _You_ remember.”

Aziraphale fretted his fingers together, playing his worry like a recorder. “Oh of _course_ I remember! But the Flood was a long time ago and it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it.”

Crowley sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “There would be, if either of us had free will. Maybe.” They watched in silence as Laertes begged the priest to at least say a prayer for his sister. Crowley mouthed some words and Aziraphale looked at him askance.

“I wouldn’t have thought you still remembered your prayers.”

“Oh please, I’ve botched my fair share of exorcisms, I know what’s said on occasions like this. But it’s not that, it’s just.” The demon fumbled for more words. “I’m sorry, angel, I know her death isn’t your fault, and neither is her destination now that it’s over.”

“Well that’s Hamlet done,” sang the angel as he returned to the earthly sphere. A brief clearing of his throat and he was back to ordinary speech. “I took Laertes up there at the same time, figured he deserved it after they forgave each other. Now what?”

Crowley could only gesture mutely at the ambassadors from England. He’d _really_ been hoping Aziraphale would stay away just a little longer, long enough for them to deliver their message and get out. “…to tell him his commandment is fulfilled, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.”

“What?!” came Aziraphale’s strangled cry. “Oh no, not _them_ too. But they were on a boat; it should have been _safe_. Crowley!” he moaned, flinging out a hand for the demon to catch. “He promised, the Almighty Father promised boats would be safe.”

“Safe for _people_ , angel,” Crowley corrected, and hated himself for it. “Not safe for a _person_ or two, why should God care about that?”

“There is providence in the fall of a sparrow,” he whimpered as he crumpled to the floor. “All creatures great and small, He said.”

“Where should we have our thanks?” the ambassador asked one of the few living humans left.

“Your thanks? I’ll give you thanks!” roared Aziraphale through his sobs. “How could you? How could _Hamlet_? Of young days brought up with him!”

“Hush,” soothed Crowley. “They can’t hear you. And it’s like you say – evil carries with it the seeds of its own destruction.” He shrugged apologetically. “They did have a letter.”

“No, that’s not enough. To have struggled for so long and still be given so little. I couldn’t – I couldn’t – I couldn’t save a single one, not one person.”

“I know, I know,” said Crowley, “sometimes you just can’t save anyone. But we did – today! Or I don’t know, probably we didn’t do anything and it was all Hamlet giving everything he had to save his lover.” He could understand that inclination, and sometimes thought it was worth more than any miracle or temptation, but how could he say that to Aziraphale, _now_? “Anyway what does it matter? We’ve been around for a long time, so I know you’ve seen people die before.”

“Yes, but _not_ people I’d sworn to protect. These Danes were all so alive, and now they’re just… compounded to dust.”

And as the angel trembled beside him, Crowley looked across the room at Horatio, and could have sworn the man made eye contact. It stood to reason that someone who’d just come so close to suicide would be able to see a demon. _As_ a demon, there was only so much comfort he could provide, but he could enforce an unholy directive that Horatio stay on this earth as Hamlet had requested. And he could reach into his sleeping mind to wipe away the worst of the nightmares.

But that would come later. Now he stayed near the angel and silently cursed the fourteenth century.


End file.
